So I have been, happily, let down by the Vancouver Sun. I was relatively sure that their “Empowered Health” series was going to be chock full of ample fodder for my skeptical scalpel, but so far it is simply “diet and exercise” repeated ad infinitum, mixed with a few exercises in lazy journalism. As a result, I am going to suspend my weekly examination of the stories, since it makes for boring blogging (and I’m sure boring reading too).
The Crommunist Manifesto
"The stubborn persistence of chauvinism in our life and letters is or ought to be the proper subject for critical study, not the occasion for displays of shock." - C. Hitchens
That’s Canada for you: sensible to the point of boring. Or not, as the post below shows…Just to point out, diet and exercise are not panaceas for health problems. I’ve seen any number of patients with nasty illnesses who asked me, “How could this happen to me? I eat right, exercise regularly, and have never smoked.” The answer, unfortunately, is that your BRCA mutation or factor V leiden don’t care if you did everything “right”, they’re still going to give you cancer or thrombosis. Good health habits reduce your risk of various problems, but they aren’t perfect preventative measures.
Absolutely not panaceas, but at a population level they lower your risk greatly. This is the difference between how an MD thinks and how an epidemiologist thinks. “Individuals? What are those? You mean datapoints?”
Yep. I eat well, exercise, don’t smoke, rarely drink to excess, and I still managed a heart attack. Why? genetics. My father had one in his mid fifties and my mother and one in her early 70s.
I suppose if I had gone in for regular homoeopathic treatments I could have avoided it altogether.
You’re an epidemiologist? I had the idea–FSM knows why–that you were in the physical sciences. Probably some stereotype about math and music.